


Tall, Tall Shadow

by AceQueenKing



Category: Greek and Roman Mythology
Genre: F/M, Homecoming, Hopeful Ending, Memories
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-15
Updated: 2019-02-15
Packaged: 2019-10-28 01:12:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 907
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17777750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AceQueenKing/pseuds/AceQueenKing
Summary: Penelope is clever, and still, she waits for a man she can't quite believe isn't coming home.The only problem is: one day, he does.





	Tall, Tall Shadow

**Author's Note:**

  * For [betony](https://archiveofourown.org/users/betony/gifts).



These are the things she clutches to her chest, memories burned into her from the night he left:

 _—his eyes_ —Warm and quicksilver charming, crinkling with smiles that lied and looked perturbed upon the horizon, eyes she would know blindfolded, would know no matter what part of her they gazed upon.  
  
_—his mouth_ — His is a mouth that promises he'll be home soon even if they both suspect that’s a lie. The words don’t mean as much as how he says them, with a passion that tells her how desperately he wants to believe.

 _—his hands_ —holding their son in them, just born; memorizing every detail with her, tracing their features in their child: his nose, her mouth, eyes as wide as hers but full of his father’s quicksilver charm.   _A strong boy,_ he says, with a small quiver to his chin she doesn’t comment on, her throat a miserable lump.

These are the memories she carries; the memories she tries to weave into her second bridal veil. It has been many years; any hope she had of him coming home _should_ have died long ago. Ithaca needs a king and her son is too young to lead; the mantle is too heavy for those small shoulders, so much more her own than his fathers. _Her fault_ , her suitors whisper; she isn’t deaf to their needless criticism. _The boy is weak, like the mother_. She thinks she would hate them all, even without shining Odysseus being an impossible phantom, an idealized ghost set upon a pedestal made of blood and steel.

And so she puts it off, and so she says to her charmless suitors _; I must_ have my veils before I can choose. And so she stalls, tells her ladies they must put into cloth what she remembers of a good marriage, a proper marriage. Every morning she makes seven stitches and every night she undoes eight; for how could she put Odysseus' hands into fabric? How could she trace that trembling dimple into cloth? She watches the sun set on the horizon, biting her lips as she wills his ship to come home, though it does not.

So she pulls it down, draws out the stitches, leaves it nearly bare. Tomorrow maybe she'll capture him, tomorrow maybe he’ll come home, tomorrow maybe Telemachus will stand a little straighter, grows into his father’s tall, tall shadow. She still believes, knowing she shouldn't, that he will come home. She can almost taste it now; his smile as he comes home, silver-haired but no less handsome, grinning like the clever jackal he has always been, the man she has always loved. He can come home as a beggar, as an invalid, as a conquering hero—she will know him by his eyes, his mouth, his hands, and she would know him anywhere. No disguise he holds could fool her. 

 But until then, Penelope weaves, sending the loom three paces forward and two paces back. 

* * *

 She thinks she will know him when he gets home, but she doesn’t. His eyes, his lips, his touch; they're all there but after 20 years gone, the memories loom large enough to blind her. Were his eyes so flinty, so pitiless then? Did he have such a long scar, a straight line so neatly bisecting his lower lip? Were his hands knotted with arthritic tension? 20 years changes a man. 20 years of holding precious memories tight in her palm make the mortal husband slip through her grip, the pedestals so high she can no longer see the man atop it.

But it is the memories too that is their salvation, for he remembers the big, olive bed he first lied her upon, the bed they clamber to together now.

And it is this she makes new memories of:

 _—_ _his eyes _—__ still quicksilver cleverness, with extra wrinkles that suggest the hard nights he has had, far from home; he looks only to her now, for she is his horizon, and he stares at her as if she is a goddess, despite her wrinkled brow and grey hair, despite all the years that have melted away in the time they have been so long parted.

 _—_ _his mouth _—__ talking in low voices of all the places he has been; the words matter less than the curve of the mouth, amused as he tells his stories to his favorite audience, the part she plays with a passion, cooing as he survives each story, closing her eyes and listening and remember that he is here, he is here, he is here.

 _—_ _his touch _—__ gliding through her back, down her belly; there, a scar from when she fell off a horse during their wedding ceremony, here, a stretch mark from their baby. _You have been so strong, wife,_ he says, and her eyes close, holding tears that ache behind her eyes.

When they finish making love, they stay together, awake and sated but unwilling to part. He presses kisses to her head, and Penelope closes her eyes, knows victory after so many years of just barely getting by.

The sun sets on the horizon; for the first time in years, Penelope pays no attention to it, for her sun burns in her arms, and all is right with her world. 

She does not weave again, but it does not matter; the future continues to spill forth anyway, even if she can never quite get his likeness in cloth. 


End file.
